• I wonder how the satirists will treat Obama. Race is an even more sensitive issue in the States than it is here, so it's going to be a tough few months. Already they are sidling up to him, skirting round the subject. "Obama win causes obsessive supporters to realise how empty their lives are," was a headline in the comic paper The Onion, which also ran "Nation finally shitty enough to make social progress." This is slanted praise rather than satire. The Daily Show marked the historic moment: "Nation elects first largely Hawaiian president." I'll bet it's this time next year before we see the first frontal assaults.

• Tina Fey, the brilliant impressionist whose Sarah Palin was so good that you couldn't distinguish between her and the real thing, must be praying the governor stays in national politics. If she does Ms Fey can earn far more than Mrs Palin ever would have done as vice-president.

• I think I'm right in saying that Obama is the first US president ever to come from an ethnic background which isn't north-western European. Britain, Ireland, Holland and Germany have provided all the previous 43, if at several removes. It's hard to forget that at first African-Americans didn't greatly care for him, even though he was, literally, an African American. Like Colin Powell, he hadn't undergone the American slave experience and for a long time didn't quite count. He also doesn't sound black.

I made this point after watching him speak in Philadelphia earlier this year, and the Guardian replaced it with "he doesn't sound like a preacher", which was nearly right - many black politicians do model their speaking styles on the pulpit - but I thought slightly missed the point.

Obama sounds like a successful trial lawyer summing up for the jury. Just as the descendants of slaves felt that he wasn't truly black, so did the white population - to put it crudely, to many people he is Black Lite.

• Hence the brilliant Doonesbury cartoon on Wednesday morning, which ended with the white soldier saying "He's half-white, you know" and the black soldier replying "you must be very proud". Though the strips have to be prepared the week before, Gary Trudeau declined to provide an alternative in case McCain won, on the grounds that it wasn't going to happen. If papers wanted to pull the cartoon, so what? In the event it was quite a coup.

• Never, ever get involved in genetics, particularly if you are a geneticist. It only leads to trouble. But now the world's leading golfer, finest racing driver and president-elect of the US are all mixed race. Does this tell us anything at all? I haven't a clue but it's an intriguing question.

• Obama does have what must be a deeply embarrassing moment ahead - the limo ride to the inauguration with the outgoing president. In January 1981 Ronald Reagan was woken up at the last minute by his aide Michael Deaver. "Governor, you're going to be inaugurated today," Deaver said. A muffled voice from the bed said, "does this mean I have to get up?" A joke of course, though Jimmy Carter was more frustrated during the ride to Congress when he wanted to raise important business about political prisoners, and Reagan only wanted to tell old Hollywood stories.

• I did a turn at our local Richmond book festival this week with, among others, Jonathan Aitken, who these days seems very calm and almost irenic. We were talking about favourite books, and his choice was the Psalms.

He described how at the end of his prison term the chaplain had asked him to speak about Psalm 130 (De Profundis) in the prison chapel, which was for once packed. (Cons love a celebrity as much as the next person.) There was a lot of noise and commotion until the prison hard man, known as The Big Face, arrived with his henchmen, when everyone fell quiet. Aitken explained that the psalm was a favourite of Augustine, Luther, Calvin and Bunyan, before giving his exposition.

Afterwards The Big Face came up, gave him a bone-cracking handshake, and said that he had been deeply moved.

He would be grateful if Aitken would come to his cell and give the same talk to his mates. His face must have fallen because the gangster hastily added: "You can bring two of those geezers who liked it - Augustine, Luther ..."

• Thank you for the stream of terrible gifts offered in the Christmas catalogues. Among the worst is one for the garden: a plaque depicting a dog's backside. The anus serves as a trowel rest. The "motorised coin sorter" is battery-powered and sifts your pocket change into neat piles. As if anyone who wasn't running a business and needed a float would ever want such a thing. The same list offers a hollow fake dog. "Our cute Yorkshire terrier is also a handbag, so take him walkies and he'll keep your keys and purse safe."

Or a gentleman's desktop set of drawers, for cuff links, keys, pre-sorted change etc, which also serves as a recharging base for your mobile phone and iPod. Say goodbye to keys and mobe in different place on dressing table misery!

Or a small club for killing trout made out of wood from HMS Victory, a limited edition at only £99. The most horrendous is a full-sized polyresin cello containing 10 holes in the front for you to store bottles of wine.

It makes "an individual dining room focal point" and costs £129.95 - a price for which you could get a dozen bottles of first-rate wine and even three dozen of supermarket plonk. Keep them coming!